by David Carter

Greetings, sales charts fans! It’s time once again to look at DC’s sales figures.

This was the month that reality came crashing in to DC’s Rebirth.

In truth things not really bad at all. Sure, total sales are down over a million copies from last month, but since August saw DC sell a record number of comics for the modern Diamond era it would have been shocking had sales stayed that high. Things only look bad compared to the last couple of months; otherwise they are still quite strong, with total sales more than double what they were in May (the month before Rebirth).

But sales on the Rebirth books are starting to decline. The launch titles are no longer returnable, which no doubt leads retailers to be more conservative with their orders. The new Rebirth titles are not launching at the heights that the earlier books did. Again, this is all to be expected, as more and more dollars are being tied up in more and more Rebirth titles.

This month is also the fifth anniversary of the New 52 launch. And here’s a bit of a shocker: Total DCU sales for this, the fourth month of Rebirth (3,522,018) are higher than those for the first month of the New 52 (3,437,947)!

So yeah, things may be down for Rebirth from last month’s heights. But they are still really good. It’s just that things are not going to be this good forever. Sales on titles will still, in general, decline from month to month. The big question is where are they going to settle? Tune in to this very column over the next several months to find out!

September also saw the launch of the Young Animal line, but more on that below when we get to Doom Patrol…

Warning: The commentary below may contain reasoned analysis, speculation (unfounded and otherwise), opinion, and/or snark. Those looking for a more straightforward analysis are directed to John Jackson Miller’s excellent Comichron analysis, posted earlier this month over at Comichron!

Please consider the fine print at the end of the column. Thanks to Milton Griepp and ICv2.com for the permission to use their figures. An overview of ICv2.com’s estimates can be found here.

(Note that the percentage comparisons are now done with total orders including reorder activity, as opposed to initial orders as was the practice of this column under the previous administration.)

Returnable and an f.o.v.; see the fine print at the end of the column. Or refer to last month’s column for a lengthy discourse on how returnability factors into the Diamond sales estimates and why we adjust the sales figures for returnable comics up by 10%.

Yes, I know when you look at the sales charts it says that Batman #6 was the top seller of September. But since ASB was returnable and Batman was not, ASB moves up into the top spot.

A 50% drop is steep, but it falls in line with what we see for titles whose debut issues are flush with extra variants. It’s still good enough to put ASB on top, and at a $5 price tag too.

No longer returnable, but still f.o.v.s. The don’t-increase-for-returnability crowd will use the steep drop-off between #5 and #6 as evidence that increasing is ill-advised. I’ll make the counter-argument that retailers are just being more conservative in their orders, especially as more and more Rebirth titles are coming out and taking a bigger (overall) bite out of their monthly orders. We shall see in January once the year-end figures come out.

For titles like Batman that were New 52 launch titles, the five-year comparisons this time out are for the debut issues of the New 52; the two-year comparisons are to the shiny 3-D enhanced Futures End issues, and the six-month comparisons are to the 50th issue extravaganzas. So the percentage comparisons for those are likely going to be down. But then, these are just two ordinary issues of Batman; so with that in mind the percentages don’t look nearly as bad.

Issue #7 was the start of the “Night of the Monster Men” crossover. No real boost here, but then it is typical for the top-selling title in the crossover to not show any gain; it’s the lower-selling titles that benefit.

This is the new Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman team-up book, written and drawn by Francis Manapul. It effectively takes the place on the schedule of the old Batman/Superman and Superman/Wonder Woman books, though I’m tracking it separately from those.

The previous Trinity title was also a Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman team-up book, though it was a weekly by Kurt Busiek & Mark Bagley (and others).

Fun fact I discovered when gathering up old sales data for the previous series: it was old weekly Trinity series that led the previous proprietor of this column, Marc-Oliver Frisch, to deduce that Diamond was artificially reducing the sales figures for returnable comics. (Back then though they appear to have been doing it by 20%!) you can read all about it in the July 2008 DC Month-to-Month column in The Beat archives.

Darn it, I swore I wasn’t going to dwell on returnability this month, yet here I go again. Sorry folks.

The Rebirth issue was returnable and had f.o.v.s; see the fine print at the end of the column.

New 52 #1: 73,675 [89,056]

Teen Titans wraps up its (second) New 52 run and launches its Rebirth this month; guess which issue is more successful, sales-wise? (Actually you don’t need to guess; it’s right there in the numbers above!)

The most successful launch of a Teen Titans series in the past fifteen years, although the 2003 series did eventually move 96,005 after having first-month sales of 75,206.

(Those percentage comparisons look anemic because we’re averaging the sales for the two issues that came out this month.)

Both returnable and f.o.v.s; see the fine print at the end of the column.

As with Suicide Squad, there was no way that Harley Quinn was going to maintain last-month’s retailer incentive-fueled sales levels. But so far we’re seeing typical new-title sales declines, so things look pretty good here so far.

Also, there was a second printing of issue #1, leading to an additional 6,153 copies added into the [brackets] and pushing its sales above the 400K mark.

And now the long-awaited debut title in DC’s new Young Animal line, the set of Vertigo-esque comics being overseen by My Chemical Romance frontman (and sometimes comics writer) Gerard Way. IIRC it was originally supposed to be under the Vertigo brand, but DC (wisely, IMHO) decided to make Young Animal its own imprint.

It’s a good debut, obviously trouncing any sales for a Doom Patrol comic in at least the past fifteen years. It even sells above two of the Rebirth debuts this month. It’s kind of a Vertigo Rebirth!

The biggest question in assembling the chart this month (or perhaps for any month since I’ve been doing these columns) is where to track Doom Patrol in the end-of-column summaries. The options were with the DCU, with Vertigo, or on its own. After consulting with The Beat’s sales brain-trust (Alex, Heidi & Xavier) I’ve decided, for the time being at least, to track Young Animal along with Vertigo. I’ll spare you all the details of the discussion (though note that good points were made on all sides of the debate), but the rationale I’ve gone with is that Young Animal was conceived of as being part of Vertigo, with Shelly Bond & Jamie S. Rich in its editorial DNA, and definitely feels like an old-school Vertigo take on DCU characters. And two of the titles, Doom Patrol & Shade, were former Vertigo books. But hey, as I said, good arguments can be made for other decisions, so please pop into the comments section below and let me know if you agree or not, and why.

No longer returnable, but still f.o.v.s. So far there doesn’t seem to be a preference for one of the alternating stories over the other; the drops look a lot like those of the Rebirth titles with more traditional structures.

The Rebirth issue was returnable and had an f.o.v.; see the fine print at the end of the column.

We’re starting to see a bit of diminishing returns on the Rebirth titles, as they move away from powerhouse titles like Batman & Harley Quinn and into lesser titles like Batman Beyond. Granted, 75K is still excellent sales for a Batman Beyond comic; the most ever, in fact. But this title will be one to track to see if it drops back down to its prebirth level, and how quickly.

According to the Diamond Top 300 chart, Nightwing #4 was returnable, but #5 was not. Which is odd because I thought the deal was that DC was making the first three months of each Rebirth title returnable? But then maybe they felt that since #5 was part of the “Night of the Monster Men” crossover it didn’t need to be returnable? Anyway, I’m taking them at their word here and have adjusted the numbers for #4 but not for #5. (Both of course had f.o.v.s.)

The Diamond Top 300 chart shows #963 as being returnable, but I think that’s an error. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t solicited as such, and it would break the first-three-months bit (though as we saw earlier they maybe broke that with Titans…) And since #964 isn’t marked as returnable, I’m going with the [*] being an error and did not adjust the numbers. Both had f.o.v.s though.

That would be a typical second issue drop. However, most Rebirth titles didn’t see a typical drop from their Rebirth issue to their regular #1 issue. But then, a lot of Rebirth books are seeing drop-offs this month, so it’s not too unusual. And it’s still doing better than the New 52 edition.

The lowest-selling Rebirth title, but still selling way ahead of previous incarnations.

—

87 - RAVEN ($2.99)
09/2016: Raven #1 of 6 -- 28,374

It looks as though DC is going to have the same problem with mini-series post-Rebirth that they had in the New 52. They’re just not seen as essential. They’re also not being branded with the Rebirth banner, so that doesn’t help either.

HQ co-writer Jimmy Palmiotti popped into the comments section last month to assure us that the Harley Quinn mini-series are making money and that DC is satisfied with their performance. I have no reason to doubt that, and it’s good to hear. But IMHO they’ll also be better off publishing two issues of the regular Harley series every month as opposed to one regular and one mini-series.

It’s a nice boost up from the end of the previous series, but just image how many more copies it could have sold if it were part of the Rebirth line? Clearly DC sees something in the title (trade sales?) because they brought it back, but why not give it every advantage you can?

Just how much of an appetite is there for a Willingham-less continuation of the Fables narrative? Looks like we’re going to find out. What the heck, Vertigo may as well give it a try. Single issue sales here may me immaterial, as Fables did plenty of business in trade collections.

The numbers above are estimates for comic-book sales in the North American direct market, as calculated by ICv2.com according to the chart and index information provided by Diamond Comic Distributors.

ICv2.com’s estimates are somewhat lower than the actual numbers, but they are consistent from month to month, so the trends they show are fairly accurate. Since it’s a “month-to-month” column, the comments, unless otherwise noted, are on the most recent month.

Bear in mind that the figures measure sales of physical comics to retailers, not customers. Also, these numbers do not include sales to bookstores, newsstands, other mass-market retail chains or the United Kingdom. Re-orders are included, so long as they either reached stores in a book’s initial calendar month of release or were strong enough to make the chart again in a subsequent month. Keep in mind that sales for some titles may include incentives to acquire variants and not every unit sold is necessarily even intended to be sold to a customer.

If additional copies of an issue did appear on the chart after a book’s initial calendar month of release, you can see the total number of copies sold in brackets behind those issues (e.g. “[36,599]”). Likewise, any lower numbers due to returns or other factors returns will also be reflected in the brackets. Should more than one issue have shipped in a month which is relevant for one of the long-term comparisons, the average between them will be used.

Titles which are returnable have their numbers artificially adjusted down by Diamond. To make up for that this column increases the reported numbers for those titles by 10%. Which is likely also wrong, but it’s a different and likely less wrong kind of wrong, and experience has shown that this leads to sales figures which are more consistent. Please refer to the August 2016 column for a lengthy discourse on returnability.

Titles released under the All-Ages line and magazines, such as Mad, mostly sell through channels other than the direct market, so direct-market sales don’t tell us much about their performance. For most Vertigo titles, collection sales tend to be a significant factor, so the numbers for those books should be taken with a grain of salt as well. To learn (a little) more about Vertigo’s collection sales, go right here.

Please keep in mind that raw sales numbers do not tell us about how profitable a book is for a publisher or for the creators.

Above all, do not allow sales numbers to dictate your purchasing and enjoyment of a particular comic. If you enjoy reading a comic series then go right on buying and reading that comic, no matter what the sales figures say.

** Two asterisks after a given month in the average charts mean that one or more periodical release did not make the Top 300 chart in that month. In those cases, it’s assumed that said releases sold either as many units as the No. 300 comic on the chart for that month or what the sales of the previous issue of the series were—whichever is lower—for the purposes of the chart, although its actual sales are likely to be fewer than that.

Opinions expressed in this column are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, Heidi MacDonald or anyone at The Comics Beat, the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council, or my former neighbor’s dog Miles.

The author of this column does weekly snapshots of Amazon comic sales charts at http://yetanothercomicsblog.blogspot.com/ and tweets about comics and related subjects on Twitter at @davereadscomics (PM me there is you need to contact me).

Comments

F.O.V. = freely orderable variant. Which has been used so many times in these columns that at this point I assume everyone knows that. But yes, I should take the Shooter approach and consider that every column may be somebody’s first :)

One concern I very much have (and am seeing play out in my stores) is that anything over the 1-2% “standard attrition” means there are a lot more comics left over than you think at first because of the bi-weekly shipping.

And remember, orders are a LAGGING INDICATOR of sales — what you’re seeing on a Final Order Cutoff number for #5 & 6 is what we (collectively) *wished we had ordered* of #2 & 3. It’s fine on the first five issues of most of these bi-weekly books because of the returns, but I know that I for one have way more copies of the 6 and 7s that I am really comfortable with.

DC’s marketshare can’t help but be radically beefed up because that’s what happens when you double-ship your hits… but double shipping your misses (we’re back in the same range as we “used to be” on AQUAMAN and GREEN LANTERN, to name two examples doesn’t actually make the stores significantly more profitable.

Also: RAVEN #1 (and #2) sold out day-of-release from DC — there’s more demand there that is reflected in the sales charts (which are, obviously, limited by stock-available)

“Apparently still returnable, even though it’s into month four. Either I don’t understand the rules, or DC isn’t sticking firmly to them…”

It’s six issues, regardless of whether the book is shipping monthly or twice-monthly. So for books with a Rebirth oneshot, it’s “Rebirth #1, #1 – #5”, for other books it’s “#1 -#6”

“IIRC [Young Animal] was originally supposed to be under the Vertigo brand”

From the day it was announced by DC, Young Animal has been a separate imprint. There were rumours ahead of time that Gerard Way was overseeing a set of books for Vertigo, but I don’t think we should be guided by Rich Johnston’s version of reality. For one thing, proper spelling would be outlawed…

Are you sure? I remember reading the “six issues”, and that certainly seems to be the case with some of the books based on Diamond’s reporting (although NIGHTWING seems to have lost the returnable designation after #4, which is five issues counting REBIRTH). But if so, sorry for the misinformation. Guess we’ll know more when the October numbers are out.

I think it’s a mistake to group Young Animal with Vertigo. The distortion of the Vertigo average should be proof enough of that. It gives the imprint the appearance of being much more healthy than it is. Plus, while the Young Animal titles are certainly descendants of the Vertigo of the 90s, the Vertigo of today is a much different animal (pun intended) and is home to very different books than it was 20 years. ago.

Nightwing #5 IS returnable (looking at the line about it in my POS right now)… in fact, here’s the original press release, dated 4/13:

**********************************************
Excitement for the new DC Universe: Rebirth initiative is on the rise – and now, DC Entertainment unveils one of the key ordering incentives for Rebirth: Returnability on the first three months of all new series and the specials they spring out of!

DC will make the issues listed below returnable at a later date. Included in this list are REBIRTH #1 specials, new monthly series, new twice monthly series and more.

Please note that DC does not plan to make DC UNIVERSE: REBIRTH #1 returnable.

Retailers will be required to return stripped covers for issues that are being returned.

Here is a look at the titles that will be made returnable at a later date.